Arlington residents will get another year of commuter bus service after the board of Dallas Area Rapid Transit approved a contract extension this month. But the future of public transit in Arlington beyond 2017 is anyone's guess.

A year from now, DART will ask Arlington to decide whether it wants to join its service area. If Arlington declines, the traffic-clogged city of 388,000 will lose its single bus line.

The Arlington bus line has performed below expectations. Though city officials once hoped it would reach 500 trips per day, MAX is tallying between 275 and 300 daily trips, according to city statistics.

Williams supported a DART contract extension this year, but he also speaks enthusiastically about alternatives to diesel-fueled buses, such as battery-powered "people mover" vehicles and ride-hailing apps like Uber and Lyft. Also on his radar is a startup in Boston called Bridj that lets riders reserve a spot in a shuttle using a mobile app.

The Dorothy Spur is just sitting there waiting for somebody with a clue. Gets you from Centerpoint station to I-30, then you just need to build across the interchange and head down Road to Six Flags, you could get stops for new Rangers Ballpark, Arlington Conv center, and Jerry World, and then head down south to exisiting right of way in tracks parallel to Division, and go east to the Police Department and UTA. Most of the train south of I-30 would be elevated, but it could be done fairly straightforward from an engineering perspective.

The Dorothy Spur is just an industrial spur, where freight trains run very slowly, like 10 to 20 mph even when it was in great shape, it wasn't designed for passenger trains running at 80 or 60 mph. And it's in terrible shape today. It's best use for passengers is a bike path, imho.

Arlington shouldn't need trains until it has established bus services, and the same can be said for Grand Prairie too. Golly, Hood and Somerville Counties have a better bus service than either Arlington or Grand Prairie, and it's not much to call home and brag about.

After even minimal bus services have been established, the trains servicing Arlington and Grand Prairie should parallel US 80 (is it a state highway now?) or the UP main line. Ideally, it would be great to get access to the UP main line, but that's probably never going to happen in our lifetimes. But the train should connect Dallas, Grand Prairie, Arlington, and Ft. Worth along a route south of I-30, The Dorothy Spur only connects Arlington with Irving. A major disappointment to say the lease.

I just don't see them doing anything with mass transit at all. They have the stadiums they want and seems to not have much voter desire for mass transit.

I really don't see how the HSR would work. Having ridden the bullet train in Japan the comparison would be like flying from Love Field to an airport near the stadium... These trains are just not commuter trains - the 3 cities are too close together. I think you will be more likely to see the line extended from Dallas up to Oklahoma City.

gshelton91 wrote: I think you will be more likely to see the line extended from Dallas up to Oklahoma City.

Apparently, the distance would be right, but I still worry there's not enough trips between DFW/OKC/Tulsa to satisfy the needs of a profitable HSR. South to Austin, San Antonio, Laredo and Monterrey the worry being the extra cost transecting congestion, but the trips are certainly sufficient.

The only purpose of proposing a HSR station in Arlington is to get the people interested and drawn to the allure of a cross town train.... I like a station in Fort Worth, but... well, like just about everyone else here, Arlington is not appropriate.

It would be better to simply have a commuter line like the TRE along 30 or close to it between Dallas and Fort Worth Downtowns with a stop in GP and Arlington. Then express trains on the route for events along with the scheduled trains.

There should really be an express train option for Downtown Dallas to DFW. Fort Worth could use their commuter Cotton Belt route for the same thing. None of them need to be bullet trains; they just need to be commuter trains with express options. The Arlington Express option should only be in place for event.

In any case, this Arlington option will likely not get anything any time soon.

Dmkflyer wrote:It would be better to simply have a commuter line like the TRE along 30 or close to it between Dallas and Fort Worth Downtowns with a stop in GP and Arlington. Then express trains on the route for events along with the scheduled trains.

Hasn't a 'to Fort Worth' HSR route been proposed as elevated over/alongside the TRE? If area politico-boosters simply must have the extension to Oklahoma and points north run through Fort Worth, the TRE corridor would make more sense to me... leaving Arlington to be satisfied with TRE along I-30 to the Statiums, Hwy180 to UTA and Fort Worth, as well as north to Centerport/DFW and Grapevine....

tamtagon wrote:Hasn't a 'to Fort Worth' HSR route been proposed as elevated over/alongside the TRE? If area politico-boosters simply must have the extension to Oklahoma and points north run through Fort Worth, the TRE corridor would make more sense to me... leaving Arlington to be satisfied with TRE along I-30 to the Statiums, Hwy180 to UTA and Fort Worth, as well as north to Centerport/DFW and Grapevine....

A Dallas to Oklahoma City, or to Tulsa could follow the TRE line to Irving, where it branches off a take the Madil subdivision line north into Oklahoma, where several options opens up. After passing Frisco, it could take an entirely new HSR route to wherever they want to go. The point I'm trying to make is that detouring to Ft. Worth isn't a requirement to have trains head north. It might be cheaper and easier to accomplish to visit Ft. Worth, but there are other routing options.

electricron wrote:The point I'm trying to make is that detouring to Ft. Worth isn't a requirement to have trains head north.

Totally! ---and the rise of Plano/Frisco would be strong competition to Fort Worth for a second regional station should the trek north ever make sense.

I like the idea of a station in Fort Worth, though. But the extension from the Dallas Station only becomes viable with the additional of trips from Austin, San Antonio and Laredo. Presumably, Houston-Fort Worth traffic does not justify the billion dollar 30 mile extension, but hopefully the combination of trips between Fort Worth and Houston-Austin-San Antonio would. The Dallas station would handle transfers to Fort Worth, as well as however many non-stops to Fort Worth make money....

Routing through Arlington with or without a Station just make sense! DFW Airport as the final destination from San Austintonio could even void the extension to Fort Worth. Either way, if the TRE corridor could accommodate HSR, it makes the most sense.

^^All of this shows the hard sell it will be to get Arlington to join most of the rest of the Metroplex. Such a ridiculous hold-out -- if not because of the Stadiums and Six Flags, then because of UTA. Legislators really really need to allow county based transit funding mechanisms. City limit lines in Tarrant and Dallas counties do not have the same meaning anymore, the place is contiguous. Arlington and Grand Prairie are being irrationally contrary -- and I get that behavior, it's normal, but that time has passed.

tamtagon wrote:^^All of this shows the hard sell it will be to get Arlington to join most of the rest of the Metroplex. Such a ridiculous hold-out -- if not because of the Stadiums and Six Flags, then because of UTA. Legislators really really need to allow county based transit funding mechanisms. City limit lines in Tarrant and Dallas counties do not have the same meaning anymore, the place is contiguous. Arlington and Grand Prairie are being irrationally contrary -- and I get that behavior, it's normal, but that time has passed.

I agree. It passed a good while back. The suburbs south of Arlington/Grand Prairie now carry the torch of mass residential growth and sprawl. Even if Arlington & Grand Prairie wanted to, they can no longer grow that way because they're landlocked and have little room for that type of growth. They're just stuck now with all the traffic that comes with people going trough their cities and to those other suburbs (which will only increase). They need to take a few tips from Plano, Richardson, and other inner city suburbs and embrace public transportation for growth. It's either Heavy Rail (too expensive), Light Rail, or Commuter Rail.

There is so much "smart growth" potential between the West Fork Trinity River and Hwy 180 [Lancaster (Fort Worth)-Division (Arlington)-Main (Grand Prairie)-Davis/Fort Worth Blvd (Dallas)].

The combination of factors and attributes within this corridor linking the downtowns of Dallas and Fort Worth are impressive: tens of thousands of river impacted acreage only suitable as managed wilderness, all variety of municipal parks, open green space and a wide array of riparian and aquatic recreation; a public university on track to becoming a major research facility; World Class professional sport facilities for Football, Baseball, Basketball, Hockey and Futbol.

This potential is lost as long as the four cities, Dallas, Grand Prairie, Arlington and Fort Worth are not fully engaged in unified transportation initiatives giving pervasive access to the corridor by bus, strategic access by commuter train and/or light rail coordinated to supplement and increase productivity of vehicular capacity.

Working with the natural environment and fluctuating needs of the river, North Texas absolutely should manage and program the length of the West Fork Trinity & Elm Fork Trinity and Trinity Rivers through Tarrant and Dallas counties. For as much as people deride North Texas over the lack of natural beauty like a beach or mountains, certainly municipal, civic and business leaders are intentionally ignorant of the River.

All the grand, superlative and highfalutin visions of Dallas' Trinity River Park and Great Trinity Forest are not just attainable, what we've been presented with so far do not do justiceto how nice it really could be.

um, ha ha, it all starts with public transportation in Arlington and Grand Prairie. whew

Arlington needs to focus on establishing a public transit system. Buses. They keep experimenting with this and that while traffic gets worse and their infrastructure gets worse. Arlington has this really bad suburban mentality that focuses too much on sports entertainment rather than essential transit amenities.

Dorothy Spur separated from the Rock Island Railroad (now TRE) just west of CentrePort Station. It wwnt down a sreep grade to a bridge across the Trinity and continued south on the east side 360 to connect with the switching tracks of the Great Southwest warehouse district.